


abandoned youth

by hypophrenia



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), M/M, two homies growing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 18:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21342685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypophrenia/pseuds/hypophrenia
Summary: Growing up is just another word for walking towards death; Ouma Kokichi is just another word for eternal immaturity.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 71





	abandoned youth

**Author's Note:**

> whew. normally i would NEVER double post on ao3 but i found this in my 2018 folder and since 2019 is almost over....time to just chuck out this bad boy. i think at that point (when i wrote this) i already knew i wasn't as into danganronpa hence the parallels from me n ouma...im so big brained
> 
> anyways happy 4 or 5 year anniversary danganronpa you're dead and so am i

five.

Ouma meets, with some certain amount of a trepidation, a Sherlock Holmes wannabe. He’s just a bit taller than Ouma is, acts like a total pushover, and carries with him a worn copy of A Study in Scarlet which he can’t even read.

He can read just a little more than the other kid can, so Ouma’s in charge of reading to him. Which is to say, he and Saihara Shuuichi gather under the tree during recess and he pretends he knows exactly what he’s reading to Saihara. Which the kid eats up completely, and Ouma almost feels bad for making up a story about a detective who goes on a wild journey in outer space on a red colored spaceship.

Saihara gives him a piece of paper later, with a poorly drawn crayon stick figure on top of a rocketship colored with a red marker. The red bleeds through and it’s not even properly in the lines, but Ouma puts it under his bed and claims it’s a Best Friend Certificate. With a little bit of something he later recognizes as affection and pride, he continues weaving the story of outer space detective Sherlock Holmes and his bright, marker-red spaceship.

(Saihara doesn’t find out until he’s, like, thirteen and can understand the entire book. By that point he knows Ouma well enough to be expecting it. 

He’s still surprised to the point of falling out of his chair anyways.)

eight.

Ouma can probably skip third grade. Probably. And maybe Saihara too, but now that he thinks about it, Saihara’s smart but he can’t breeze through a whole year’s worth of learning in less than a year. 

And, okay, Ouma can definitely skip third grade because he can already start grasping fifth grade stuff, and if that’s not a complete show of intelligence then nothing will ever be. But Saihara’s not even going to think about skipping any grades, and Ouma’s, like, Saihara’s only friend.

And so, out of pity, he’ll stay. He’s just that kind!

When he relays this to Saihara in the yard during lunch, he doesn’t seem as in awe as he should be. And he’s definitely lacking the overabundance of gratefulness he should be expressing, because Saihara sighs an eighth grader’s sigh and says, “thanks, Ouma,” in the most worn out voice any third grader has ever had. Imagine that! Little Mister Gloomy here to join the rest of that book series.

Ouma’s getting really, really worried for Saihara, honestly and truly. The kid’s just growing up at such an alarming rate, and it feels like just yesterday he was asking Ouma what happened after Sherlock Holmes solved the daunting mystery of who stole his rocket ship fuel and stranded him on Planet Loser. (It was Komota Maito, who may or may not have been based on a classmate.)

Now Saihara sighs a lot, eats his lunch with the care of an ancient grandfather trying not to choke (“_seriously, Ouma, choking on food can really hurt your body!_”) on his rice. He holds his chopsticks like they’re delicate pieces of incense.

But they’re still close. Ouma comes over to play Mario Kart and Saihara comes over to do homework, though they get distracted every single time. It always begins with an innocent question, and suddenly they’re scrambling to the kitchen to see if they can make a smoothie with a Ziplock bag, ice, and a mushy banana.

Often times, when food’s in the process, one of them eats their botched creation. Saihara got food poisoning once, and had to get driven to the hospital as soon as they put raw salmon and salmonella together.

But when neither of them’s hospital bound thanks to an impulsive, bad idea, it’s like all they’ve got ahead of them is a future of video games and bad food combinations.

thirteen.

Let it be known that eighth graders never have, and never will have, the brightest minds. They’re at just the ripest age where a handful trying Juuling in the school bathrooms. And eighth graders are brimming with confidence from being the oldest in middle-fucking-school. 

Saihara’s not one of the destined high school dropouts, but he’s not complete perfection either. He’s a greasy mess whose crushes only get more obvious by the day. And they’re all so straight!

Kaede Akamatsu is pretty, yeah, Ouma can admit that, and she’s nice in a way that all middle schoolers flock to and secretly envy. She’s popular, has a whole crowd of best friends, and said hi to Saihara once, helped him pick up his three textbooks, and suddenly it’s like Saihara’s made of hormones. Ouma catches him mooning over Akamatsu from across the room in Social Studies, like a lovelorn idiot. And also very much like Akamatsu's multiple other admirers.

Ugh. Teenagers.

Eighth grade is also when the school presentations on LGBT awareness and school bullying get more and more common. And the whole “treat others the way you want to be treated” schtick is more often mocked than put into practice. The attempts at sex ed in science classes are embarrassing for both the teacher and the taught and the walls are lined with cheap “supportive” posters all scribbled over. Everything’s pointless.

But the silver lining of it all is that high school’s coming up; going to one of the good ones means all those hopeless, future gas station employees will be weeded out. Akamatsu’s headed to a school of the arts, having made it into the music instrument section, and he and Saihara are headed to the only decent public school in the city. Saihara was depressed for a while about having to part with his dear Akamatsu, and at this Ouma had faked a gag, but seemed to recover well enough. Good for him. 

Ouma’s never had to try too hard with tests, and Saihara’s got a brain to rival God’s if he put in just a bit of effort and grew a backbone. Maybe he’s exaggerating with the God part. Maybe not. The point is, they’re headed to high school in, like, a semester. And then maybe Saihara won’t be so focused on what Akamatsu might think of him, or how to blend in more with the crowd. 

Maybe he’ll actually have a whole conversation with Ouma sometime soon. The idea twists his stomach in a nervous, almost-excited way. 

(High school features different classes, different lunch periods, and slowly, they stop talking. Middle school friends never last in high school, after all. It’s an unspoken truth passed on by the eleventh and twelfth graders.

Ouma gets a scholarship to an average college on the East Coast. Saihara reaches, flails, and finds himself in a community college ten minutes from home.)

twenty-one.

Ouma Kokichi finds one Saihara Shuuichi in a bar in his hometown. He’s only visiting for a bit, before he heads back to his house across the country.

The streets are smaller, the shops on the street older and rattier, only partially due to age. He’s seen a bright city with lights that never go out and skyscrapers that extend to a place beyond anyone’s reach. 

His parents are older, slower, and he finds that he’s no longer the one trying to catch up to their long strides anymore. They cook him a warm meal and send him off on his way, shooing him away to go catch up with old classmates.

He finds himself at the only decent bar around. When he was younger, it looked so bright and forbidden, but now it just feels like any old building. With a flash of his ID, he's in, and spies Saihara by the counter. He doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s the age, mostly, and not having talked to each other since late ninth grade.

When Ouma goes through his memories, he finds an answer to his stomach turning and twisting so often in middle school. It’s called gay, 100% homosexual pure and unfiltered. A small wonder he never noticed, with all the school presentations and whatnot.

But seeing Saihara now is like seeing a hollowed out memory. Ouma casually slides into the stool next to Saihara's, and marvels at how he doesn’t feel fidgety next to him anymore. The wonders of growing up have shown themselves once again.

“Hey,” Saihara says, and his voice has a slight rasp that isn’t exactly the worst sounding. Like, a cross between dry from forgetting to drink and the natural grating noise that comes from disuse. He sounds tired, and the bags under his eyes can attest that much. But if it makes sense, he's grown into his eyebags. In middle school, it pegged him as a gamer boy loser. Now, he looks like a respectable, if not tired, member of society. Perhaps not functioning. Ouma catches himself from staring just beyond the line of weird.

The catch-up game is simple; they take turns asking a shallow, opened ended grown up question. _What do you do now? Is it fun?_ No one asks _do you miss what we were, do you want to go back to when we were eight_, things like that. 

Saihara works at his uncle's detective agency, solving little odds and ends. Ouma is a consultant for businesses. Saihara likes his job, even if the pay’s a little low and the cases a little boring. Ouma thinks it’s fun bossing people around, even if it’s to help them out. He gets paid for it.

The questions build on top of each other, one by one. Have a girlfriend? Want kids? Think about a vacation? Meaningless, meaningless. Saihara’s done asking about what Ouma wants to do in the future, and then it’s like something clicks.

“This is dumb,” Ouma says, and cutting right through Saihara’s shock, he adds, “remember when I convinced you Sherlock Holmes was a space detective with a red rocketship?”

And when Saihara finally smiles for real, Ouma thinks there may be something salvageable after all.


End file.
